If you want to keep up on Billy’s perspective of what’s going on in the county, then please look up Councilman Billy Shreve’s page on Facebook. Don’t worry you don’t have to friend him, it’s public for all the world to see. We decided to hop on over and see how his gun safety class went. And according to his posts, which include videos, not so good! First off, we have a TV segment about the class in which it appears that only Billy and one other person showed up. And secondly, if you have about 10 minutes, you can watchBilly shoot in the dark and get reprimanded for not following instructions. You’ll have to scroll down a few posts to see it.

Another post that caught our eye was some more wedding venue drama. It has to do with the property in Emmitsburg that we wrote about a few weeks back. We asked why Billy and Kirby weren’t championing this cause. Well, Kirby hasn’t piped up, despite this property being in his district, but Billy sure has:

Frederick County Council Member Billy Shreve said he believes someone is targeting event venues in the county, trying to get them shut down.

Egendi (sic) Estates near Emmitsburg sought approval in 2014 for a wedding venue and was unanimously denied by the Frederick County Board of Zoning Appeals after a public hearing process. Neighbors opposed this application. Until Egendi has an approval by the Frederick County Board of Appeals for a special exception use, they cannot legally operate as a wedding venue. To the best of my knowledge, they have not applied for a new approval from the Frederick County Board of Appeals. It is important to recognize that the denial of this business happened during the prior administration (not this administration).

Well, well, well it’s a good thing Billy is out there playing the blame game. For how else will we ever see results in this county? It’s really perplexing to us why any business would seek Billy or Kirby out to help them out with Frederick politics. For it seems they could only be hurting their cause. Edit: we have no reason to suspect that this business has sought Shreve’s attention; only noting that those who have sought it out may want to carefully consider whether this buffoon does them more harm than good.

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Happy weekend to you Yokels! On the front page of the FNP today there is a nice little story entitled: “Delauter Backs Off Of Leasing Strategy”. We’ve written about his workshop and were all so skeptical on how building a bunch of schools now and then incurring $102 million extra in debt was advantageous. Somehow between that meeting and today the plan was re-written to include “only” $50 million more in payments. Still a perplexing proposal from someone who claims to “govern like a taxpayer today.” Now who do you think Kirby is blaming for the dissolution of his idea? We are sure you don’t have to think too hard on that one!

“There was a disagreement on the finances and costs associated with the possibility of privately funded schools,” Delauter wrote in Friday’s news release. “We have been dealing with concerns for school construction for the past 20 years. I was diligently seeking ways to build schools in the future with the least amount of impact on the Frederick County taxpayers. It has become clear to me that the County Executive is stuck in yesterday’s thinking where you always turn to the taxpayers to pay for everything. I am truly sorry to the taxpayers that we were not able to work to find new solutions to an old problem.”

How in Poseidon’s blue ocean is this plan not turning to the taxpayers?! Just because we aren’t putting the money up right this very second, doesn’t mean we aren’t going to being paying out the wazoo for this later! It’s clear from every meeting and discussion of this topic this idea will cost us more. Not today, but surely tomorrow. WAIT! Have we finally discerned the meaning of the “govern like a taxpayer today” slogan! I think we have. Whew, that took a few years but we finally cracked the code!

Now, with this idea laid to rest, hopefully some more realistic solutions can be found to solve this very real problem. And quickly because this same article ended with this:

Delauter has said he’s seriously considering running against Gardner for the county executive spot in 2018.

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A press release fortuitously slid its way into our inbox today, and you will never guess what that’s about! Apparently everyone in Frederick County is just worked into a lather after Cleveland FearMongerfest 2016. During the Two Eleventybazillion Minutes Hate we all learned about the scary and terrible no longer great country that we live in, where crime is up and the sky is falling and there is random violence everywhere. Facts say that crime has been on the decline over the last several years (thanks, Obama). Even though there has been terrible news just recently, the long term trend shows that police are safer at work, too. Luckily Newt Gingrich was available to assert that feelings are more important than facts in some sort of diabolical twist where willful ignorance is a.) a virtue and b.) no longer bliss, but a dystopian nightmare. Voila, local nuttery ensues?

Truck Nutz.

Some guy–who lets face it, is probably a friend of Billy’s, because Billy has never appeared to be real motivated to bother with anything up to and including cast votes during a council meeting–out of Washington County is offering “Wear and Carry” classes. At first we thought this was about wearing and carrying Pampers, because…it’s weeeelly, weeeelly scaaaawey out thewe. The GingGrinch said so.

But NO! Billy wants to let us know he signed up for a class. Betcha never thought you’d hear about Billy taking a class, right? He’s wanting all of Frederick County (but not in Frederick County; you have to drive to Washington County) to come learn about guns pew! pew! pew! at Hinder Shot Sports. No, that’s not right…Hey, if you want to know when and where, find out somewhere else. This is so not our bag. This is even for the “never ever shooter.” That, folks, is a direct quote. As a devoted never ever shooter, one might think a benefit of said philosophy would be that you don’t have hang out with Billy Shreve at a gun range, examining autopsy reports (yup! autopsy reports!).

Also, too. What is this sudden interest in learning? Attaining knowledge in advance is not in the Shrelauter Code. Which is kept on a different shelf than Robert’s Rules, which are hidden using a suuuuuuper secret code developed by Dewey of the Order of the Decimal System, probably.

If you have any questions, you can call Councilman Shreve. (lolololololol) Also, keep that on the D.L. because we remember that Kirby said he can teach this stuff, and it seems like it might hurt his feelieweelies if he finds out this came down the pipe while he was on vacation.

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School will soon be back in session and your thoughts are surely turning to how to fill the rest of your free time while your kids are in their last summer camps and what am I going good to do with all these kids all the rest of our free time???

Never fear, your Yokels have some great titles to help keep you occupied while you sit poolside, beach side or anywhere else you might find yourself for what is left of this summer.

We are going to start with our recommendations from last summer. Gosh darn it, they are STILL relevant. But don’t worry, if you aren’t new here and read all the selections from last summer, we have new riveting titles as well.

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The Ole Yokel inbox was afire over a certain council member’s outrage over being asked to hand over his cell phone at meetings. It started off like this:

And continued along these lines:

Has our elite education failed us? All of us here at the Yokel took political science and not one of us remembers being asked to keep your face out of your cell phone during a meeting a tenet of socialism. And if he likes to hear from the public, then what about us? If Bob Miller gets your number #, what about your Lady Yokels? We want to text you during meetings as well! What say you #kirbydelauter? Email us at fclocalyokel@gmail.com. We promise to keep it to ourselves.

Seems as though our readers believe she’ll insert her religion into school board policies. Hopefully we won’t have to test this theory out!

Afraid so Mr. Grasshopper

The county council is on a meeting break until August 15. How do you think Shrelauter is going to spend this time? Maybe writing new legislation or studying up on the issues? Ha ha! Just kidding. Let us know what you think:

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The council reconvened at 7:00 for the public hearing to extend the fee in lieu of building Moderately Priced Dwelling Units (MPDUs). This is being done in order to allow time for the completion of a housing study. This ordinance was set to expire in September but will now be continued until June 30, 2017. There was a nice presentation from Jessica, Milton Bailey (the new Director of Housing and Community Development) and three members of the public in support of the extension.

No takers for the public comment.

Jerry starts out the council member comments tonight. The new paved path is officially open through Middletown Park. There will be more information about his new bill concerning notification of re-zoning. And, he encourages people to get out to their local carnivals to support the firefighters.

Tony passes. In fact we did not hear a peep out of him the entire evening.

Jessica thanks the people who came out for the public hearing and praised the upcoming Ballenger Run project for including affordable rental units in their development plan. She also thanks everyone for having patience with the council as they modify their procedures and processes. She hopes they can continue to have positive dialogue.

Kirby congratulates the Thurmont Little League for making it to the State Tournament. Makes us aware that Little League is not only about winning but also about learning how to lose gracefully. Huh? We can only hope our beloved # learns this lesson himself. Very, very, soon.

He also discusses the new hotel bill. He has some issues with the stormwater management (shocker) and parking. He hasn’t gotten the answers he wanted from the city so he wants to know why are we pushing this forward.

Billy piggybacks on Jessica’s appreciation of people’s patience with the council. But of course, he’s going to complain about the time schedule again. He doesn’t like that the meeting begins at 4:30 and then the public hearing is to begin at 7:00. Tonight’s meeting was short enough for them to have a 2 hour break and it’s ridiculous! Unless and until Billy can predict how long the meeting will last, for we have seen some short ones and some that run all the way up to 7:00, he’s just blowing a lot of hot air. It is more convenient for the public to schedule it this way because then you know what portion of the meeting to show up for. But his time is way valuable people!

No more valuable than anyone else’s Batman!

M.C. talks about the extension of the bike path out to Rosemont Ave and commends the first graduating class of community health workers. These graduates will go out in our community to provide health care in those regions of our county where people don’t readily have access. A good program indeed.

Bud asks Chief of Staff Cherney to help Kirby get the information that he was seeking about the hotel. Mr. Otis also talks about the grant to Hood’s nursing program and the re-establishment of the I-270 coalition. He finishes up by reminding us that the Fireworks in Baker Park will be held on July 24 and a Veteran’s Rally in the Valley will be held on July 30 at the fairgrounds.